


Glaciem Irae

by flowerylouie



Category: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 2010: Odyssey Two
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 03:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerylouie/pseuds/flowerylouie
Summary: lit. ice renewal.The year is 2010. Dave is missing, Hal is deactivated, and Frank has a lot of catching up to do.





	Glaciem Irae

Dave collapsed onto the ground next to him and ripped off his helmet. He was pale, and limp, and when Dave went to tilt his head back and open his airway he didn’t hear any breathing. The skin of his neck was cold to the touch. 

No heartbeat. 

Dave’s breath caught. He sat up, snatched a pair of scissors from the counter, and hacked away at his suit as if he was hacking at ice; as soon as his chest was exposed, he put the heel of his hands square in the center and pressed with his entire body weight.

Three rounds of CPR and Hal’s voice came crackling through the radio like he was speaking through a straw.

“I have signs of life.”

Dave stopped. Bent to put his fingers on the soft part of his neck once more, lean close to his lips to hear the whistle. And so much relief flooded over him he almost collapsed on top of the body laying in front of him.

A pulse.

Thank God, there was a pulse. And the soft, faint touch of his breath on his cheek. 

Dave made some small noise in the back of his throat-- some bit of relief, some bit of worry, some bit of  _ something _ . And he stood. Quickly. He can’t wait, and now was definitely too early for celebration: Frank has been depressurized for too long, and his body temperature was way too cold.

He stood, grabbing Frank by the armpits, and dragged him over the floor to the medical bay. With perhaps too much difficulty, he picked him up, heaved him onto one of the beds; cut off his shirt and attached the stickies to his badly deformed, black and blue chest. (Even as he was looking at him, he was wondering if he made the wrong decision; maybe he should’ve thrown him in the pod immediately.)  “Bring up the life support on this monitor, please,” the words came out in a rush, and the screen next to them came to life. He was fumbling, digging in the emergency kit. Pressing a needle into his arm, grabbing a space blanket and covering him. Only a few minutes after did he have time to stop and look up at the running lines next to them. 

Poole, F. S. The pulse was faint, but there, as was the breathing and the brain activity.

As for the rest of his body, Dave couldn’t say. But he was alive.

He didn’t let himself feel relief yet. They had a while to go until he would be considered stable, and a while even beyond that until he’d be considered safe. 

But he was alive. After everything.

Dave’s eyes drifted to the red iris clinging to the wall. 

 

 

Even after everyone else was dead, Dave didn’t leave Frank’s side. The venting of the ship, the loss of life, just made him grip harder to Frank’s hand while he was sitting next to him. He knew, in the back of his mind, it would be necessary to put him in the pod for the rest of the--suddenly now one-way--journey. The folks back home agreed that really the only option was keeping him in a coma; medically, his injuries were too overwhelming, and there was nothing to be done from the only man-- a chemist-- aboard a spaceship with limited resources. Putting him in hibernation would slow his metabolism and buy him more time until--

Until. _Until what?_ Until someone, somehow, some way comes up and gets him, he supposed. (If that even happens, he found himself thinking quietly as he tucked the sheets under him. At least Frank has better chances than he does, at the moment.) 

Dave fussed over him, though, even though he wasn’t awake. Made sure he was comfortable, gave him a pillow, extra blankets, brought things in from his cubicle like the small framed picture of his family and set it on the bed stand, just in case he wakes up. When Dave ate, he brought the trays to the med bay and ate next to his bed. There was something comforting about sitting next to the monitors: solid, indisputable proof that Frank was still alive, the soft beeps and clicks, the hum of the little fans. Frank was alive, and he was laying right next to him. 

Even though none of the others were. 

Sometimes, Dave would put his hand on the flat part of his chest. Felt it rise up and down subtly beneath his palm, the small throb of his heartbeat beneath his fingertip. His skin was warm under the fabric of his shirt. Dave soaked it in like it was the light from the sun against his face-- reminded him of how hard Frank would hug, how it would feel like he was being suffocated. Some part in the back of his mind longed for it. To be back in Florida, a week from the launch, laughing over some beers. Walking on the beach after the party, the sky like cotton candy, the breeze tossing his hair as they wandered. Or before then, even-- the meetings, the doodles in each other’s pages-- the first time Frank convinced him to come to his house and watch an episode of Star Trek. The first time hanging out after work, going to some stupid bar to unwind after a day full of protocol training. Dave longed for it, so purely, so bitterly, that he almost couldn’t stand it, the same way he longed to see red in the eye that gazed at him so intently from across the room; his knees slackened, and he found himself collapsing back into his chair.

It seemed to hit him then, how completely and utterly alone he was. Like the shattering of a window pane. 

He gripped onto Frank’s hand like it was a lifeline and wondered if it would even be possible to say goodbye. 

 

The time came, though, three days after the crisis occurred. He couldn’t afford to keep Frank out of the pod for much longer. 

And so like everything he had to do, he did it. 

And that was that.

* * *

 

For a few paralyzing seconds he couldn’t remember anything-- not his name, where he was, what was going on, or why his entire body felt raw like it had been sent through a meat grinder. When he inhaled he felt the familiar stab of broken ribs, coupled with a splitting pain in his temple, a hip that hissed more and more with each heartbeat, and a profound, deep ache that seemed to issue from everywhere, every single bone and muscle and tissue in his body. His shoulder, his neck, his arms, his lungs. 

And with the pain he began to remember. A sudden sinch in his heart. 

The pod. The impact. The terrible hissing of his suit-- a sound he could’ve gone his whole life without hearing-- the panic as he tried in vain to reconnect the split air hose. 

He had died. He was certain.

But he was here, wasn’t he? Wherever “here” was. He ran through the paces: Frank Poole, Deputy Commander of the  _ USSS Discovery One _ , a top secret mission to Jupiter, with Dave Bow-- wait, Dave! That’s what must’ve happened. Dave must’ve gone out in an EVA and rescued him before the lack of oxygen made him completely braindead. Must’ve thrown him into the hibernation pod, too-- a good move, considering how now the longer and longer Frank was conscious, the worse and worse he felt. (The odd willing to go back to the dreamless sleep-- his hand was getting tired from his white-knuckle grip on the sheets.)

He certainly wasn’t in the hibernation pod now, though, and he wasn’t on the  _ Discovery _ , either: it was too dark, smelled too much like hard liquor and dust, the mattress almost  _ too _ comfortable. No, he was in a new place completely, but judging by the gravity pulling on him, they were still in space somewhere, probably a small ship. But which one? And where were they going? A wild thought entered his mind: had he slept all the way till the _ Discovery Two _ came and plucked them out of orbit? More than five years? (He was able to open his eyes now, and he did, blinking them open but almost immediately wincing. What light there was in the room he was in sent daggers to his temples.)

His thoughts were interrupted when a large woman wearing a standard issue jumpsuit came into his view and touched a few buttons on the terminal near his head. So they  _ were _ on a spaceship, then-- why else would she be wearing the jumpsuit? (He could speak from experience: one only wears the jumpsuit if one has to.) “Don’t try to speak,” she said to him, her accent so thick Frank almost did a double take. Russian. Well, if they  _ were _ on the  _ Discovery Two _ \-- what is a Russian medic doing on an American spacecraft? “You’re doing… well, all things considered,” she continued. “I assume you can hear me by now.”

He definitely could hear her by now, and he couldn’t help his mind running at a mile a minute. Although it was not unheard of for Soviets and American astronauts to work together, why would they do that on the  _ Discovery Two _ ? Unless something had gone wrong-- or unless they were not aboard it at all. “Where am I?” he asked after multiple attempts despite her warning, the words rusty and painful, the splitting of a sore throat. “Where's Dave?”

And despite her obvious attempts not to, he could see her hesitate. Just the smallest pause before she pressed another button firmly. (Something  _ was _ wrong, something other than the disaster that was him being hit by the pod.) “Try to stay still,” she said, dodged, almost expertly. “You’re still waking up and I am still assessing your injuries.”

He couldn’t bring himself to speak again: the five words he had uttered had taken all of his strength with them, and if she wasn’t going to answer his questions now, she wasn’t going to answer them if he asked her a second time. There was certainly no use in bothering the person who was fussing over him.

That was, at least until another person came into the room-- a man this time, wearing the same jumpsuit, a flat, round wrinkly face and dark hair. He looked vaguely familiar, just on the tip of Frank’s tongue. A face from a time long ago, from a life that felt like it belonged to another man entirely.

“Dr. Poole,” said the man as he came closer, and the voice put the pieces into place. 

“Dr. Floyd,” Frank was able to respond smoothly. Nice. The words came easier this time, and although he was deeply confused, his voice didn’t show it. (Good job, Frank. Your training did you well.) “Where am I?” And why is  _ he _ here? With his presence any security Frank might've felt in his preemptive theory was thrown out the window.

Floyd took a breath. Shifted his weight a bit before finally committing. “Dr. Poole, you're aboard the Soviet spacecraft the  _ Alexi Leonov _ .” He answered slowly, perhaps a bit uneasily, as if he was unsure he should be telling him this. “The year is 2010. There was… A malfunction with the Jupiter mission.”

Okay. 2010. Nine years. It's not like it was a thousand. “Yeah, a malfunction in the AE-35 unit,” he filled in, “I remember. I was going out to put the unit back in when I got hit. What happened?”

“Well, unfortunately, that was only the beginning to the troubles-- but I think I’ll have to wait on giving you the full details until you are fully revived and stabilized.”

_ I'm pretty damn revived, if the soreness and ache coming from everywhere had anything to do with it _ \-- what the hell happened? Where are the other scientists-- Kimball, Kaminski, Hunter? And, most importantly, “Where’s Dave?” 

Suddenly that one sentence felt like the most important thing in the universe to him,  _ he _ felt the most important thing in the universe to him. Dave. He wasn’t here— then where was he? The anxiety mounting behind his ribcage was somehow just as painful as the ribcage itself.  _ If you can't tell me anything else just please answer me this _ . 

The same hesitation. Floyd shared a glance with the doctor, then back to Frank.  _ Please, please, just tell me. _

And as if Floyd heard his plea, he spoke. “Dr. Bowman vanished a few weeks after he reached Jupiter space. We haven't seen nor heard from him since. He is presumed dead.”

 

Frank, in many ways, was lucky. His injuries, although they occurred nine years ago-- shattered ribs, broken hip, severely bruised almost everywhere, a concussion, perhaps a few destroyed vertebrae --were still severe at best, life threatening at worst, and when you add onto that the good fifteen to twenty minutes he had of oxygen deprivation he was a walking miracle. Well, not quite walking and not quite a miracle, but he was alive, and that in itself was amazing. 

“It’s tricky,” said Katerina, the medic who had revived him, “but I am  _ very _ good.”

Frank believed it. She juggled the various little complexities of his illnesses with almost stunning competence. Within a week he was sitting up just fine, holding conversations without any problem. Reading, listening to music. Also within a week he had gotten the full story-- the working theories on the origin and purpose of Big Brother, the existence of the TMA-1 on the Moon, Hal’s internal conflict and what had happened to the other scientists. Dave being forced to deactivate him. Floyd gave him unlimited access, and Frank watched the videos from the  _ Discovery’s _ databanks almost obsessively, listened to the reports over and over. It was like listening to a ghost-- with each report Dave’s voice grew more and more exhausted, thinned, but cleverly masked behind an air of fake self-assurance, and all at once Frank wanted nothing more than to turn back time. (One particular report, Dave sounded on the edge of tears, and Frank almost started crying too-- but he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. His grief would be silent.)

Frank was also familiarized with the workings of the  _ Leonov,  _ which was a welcome distraction-- he met most of the crew, found out the specifics of the working systems, both social systems and mechanical ones. He hit it off with a few of the crewmembers, Katerina and Curnow especially, and the advancements in technology were utterly fascinating; soon instead of obsessing over the reports he buried himself in the engineering marvel that was modern spacecraft. And, better yet, the mystery that they were parked in orbit around: Big Brother, the ancient artifact that swallowed the light of the distant sun. (“Maybe it’s good you’ve been revived,” said Tanya in passing, “we could always use another set of eyes and another good brain. If you still have one, that is.”) 

He didn’t know the answer to that last one-- if he ever  _ had _ a good brain to begin with-- but at the two week mark he was able to stand and take steps around the med bay with assistance. 

He had effectively been resurrected.


End file.
